DLP’s Future: DualView Games, Quad-View Tech

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Games for the DualView DLP technology first introduced at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show will have to wait until 2009, a Texas Instruments representative said this week.

TI is also working on so-called quad-view technology, which it may show off at the Consumer Electronics Show this coming January. TI first announced the DualView technology at CES 2008, which took place in January.

About a million rear-projection televisions are expected to be in the market by the end of the year, Adam Kunzman, the DLP HDTV business manager for TI, said in an interview this week. All of those will have both 3D and DualView capabilities, he said.

TI’s DLP technology uses a series of micromirrors arrayed on a chip, which reflect images and project them onto a screen, either in a rear-projection display where the chip is mounted at the rear of the screen, or in a projector, where the image is displayed on a screen on the wall. Although the majority of HDTVs are designed using LCD technology, TI claims an 80 percent share of the market for HDTVs greater than 60 inches in screen size, most if not all manufactured by Samsung and Mitsubishi.

TI has received a number of inquiries from scientific customers, including medical imagers, about including the 3D or DualView technology in their products, Kunzman said.

TI’s DLP technology creates a 3D image as well as the DualView technology using variations on the same effect. Both technologies requires special glasses to work, with prices ranging from about $50 to $150.

The 3D technology slightly offsets the image from the television, so that the glasses interpret a 3D effect. Dual-view offsets the image in terms of time, synchronizing the TV’s signal with each pair of glasses. Each DLP display projects images at 120 Hz. But DualView switches back and forth between views, one perspective per hertz. At the same time, the glasses switch on and off, blanking out the other perspective. The effect, according to TI, is that one viewer sees one image, while the other sees the second image. The two images could represent opposing viewpoints in a game, for example, or a second TV channel. (In the latter case, one viewer will have to use headphones to hear the selected audio.

The technology could prove to be interesting enough to warrant some game development. Today, players using on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 must split the screen into two separate windows to play against one another, assuming they’re using the same screen. This can be a problem in a football game, for example, where both players are selecting their opposing plays at the same time, or even in a first-person shooter, where players can cheat by using the other screen to determine where the other player is.

According to Kunzman, TI doesn’t need to provide an API to software developers to allow them to take advantage of the technology, just the display technology. Outputting a Dual-View ready screen, from a software developer’s point of view, won’t be that difficult than designing for a split screen, he said.

“We’re working with the gaming world to not just support 3D output but also support our DualView feature,” Kunzman said. Not a lot of people understand the technology, he said.

Currently, there aren’t any games that take advantage of DualView, he said; an undisclosed number of games are in development. And games designed for DualView will have to wait until 2009. Which games? Kunzman isn’t saying, although id Software gave the technology a vote of confidence. “This amazing new technology from DLP is really exciting for gamers,” Steve Nix, iD software’s director of business development said in a statement. “Two players watching the same screen right next to each other can now see completely different images so no more peeking at your opponents’ moves!”

Representatives for iD did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

“The momentum is behind making 3D the next version of 1080p,” Kunzman said.

With that in mind, TI has been developing a dual-3D, “dream version” of the technology, which could present two entirely different 3D feeds to two viewers, using 240-Hz source material offset into two 120-Hz feeds. That same source could be further broken down into a quad-view display, shuttling back and forth between four 60-Hz feeds.

“We’ve demonstrated it; we know it works,” Kunzman said. “We haven’t quite nailed down our plans for CES. We’re working toward advancing that capability, as well as working toward making it compatible with solid-state illumination, both LEDs and lasers.”

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